1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a community antenna television (CATV) system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system in which a viewer can choose a program and request a time for viewing of the chosen program on the viewer's television receiver.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With over half the homes in the U.S. now equipped with video cassette recorders, a major industry has developed which includes thousands of video stores for renting movies and other programs on video cassettes in order to satisfy a demand for over three billion rentals a year. One of the reasons video tape cassette rentals have become so popular is that the viewer can rent a desired program cassette from the video store's assortment and then view that program whenever desired. This is in contrast to conventional broadcast television or premium cable television in which the viewer neither chooses the program being transmitted nor the time at which it is transmitted.
Even with the advantages of cassette rental, certain problems are apparent. For example, the viewer must make a first round-trip to the video store to pick up the desired program cassette and then make a second round-trip to return the cassette. Additionally, the viewer may make a trip to the video store only to find that the movie is unavailable either because all of the available copies have already been rented, or that particular video store does not stock the desired movie. If such occurs, not only is the viewer inconvenienced, but the video store also loses potential rental revenue.
Furthermore, the existing system for renting video cassettes presents some inherent inefficiencies. For example, in order to minimize inconvenience to the customer, the video store must be located at a premium, high rent, location such as a corner intersection or a shopping mall and pay the high rent associated with the premium location.
Second, each video store must carry a complete library of video taped programs most of which are unused at any given time. For example, it a video tape store may carry an inventory of over 5,000 program titles representing thousands more video cassettes owing to the duplication of many of the titles. The inventory problem is magnified if duplicate cassettes are stocked in VHS and BETA formats. At any given time, however, only a relatively small percentage of the titles will be rented which are typically the currently most popular programs. Even with such a large inventory, the video store can satisfy relatively few requests for the most popular programs. That is to say, even if a number of copies of a currently popular program are in stock, the demand for this program may far exceed this number of copies and potential revenue is lost while other titles lie idle.
Third, the inventory problem for video rental stores is a growing one in that new titles are released to the video market each month with the result that the number of titles in a video store's inventory grows by at least this amount each month. The physical space required to store these additional titles may grow at an even faster rate because more than one copy of each title may be purchased. In order to handle the ever increasing number of cassettes, the video store must increase its storage capacity for which it must pay a higher rent because of the store's premium location.
In order to solve some of the problems associated with the video cassette rental industry, various prior art solutions have been proposed. For example, Pat. No. 4,506,387 which is hereby incorporated by reference discloses a system in which a cable television system (CATV) may download a recording from a central location over its cable trunk line to a memory module included in the viewer's television receiver. The program is downloaded in non-real time, typically in about 30 seconds, and the viewer then activates the memory module to view the program stored therein. The '387 patent presents some disadvantages, however, in that the central location must be equipped to download the program in non-real time. Additionally, each viewer's receiver must be equipped with a memory module to store the downloaded program. Such equipment may be prohibitively expensive and may be also inefficient in that a viewer's receiver must be properly equipped even though a particular viewer may seldom, if ever, desire to take advantage of the capability.
Patent No. 4,381,522 which is hereby incorporated by reference discloses a system in which a viewer can telephone the cable company's central location and electronically select a specialized recording such as a commercial advertisement for broadcast over one of the unused channels of the cable television system. A computer then schedules the program, transmits it at the scheduled time, and separately transmits a directory of all of the scheduled programs on another unused channel. The viewer then observes the directory channel to see when the requested recording is scheduled, and then turns to the channel indicated at the scheduled time to view the program. The provision of the directory channel encourages other viewers to view one of the scheduled recordings also. The system as disclosed in the '522 patent does not allow the viewer to determine when the program is to be scheduled and furthermore provides no means by which receivers other than the one of the requesting viewer are prevented from viewing the scheduled program.